So the YoT got a job. He has is Sign All The Stuff meeting on Friday… - Tactical Ninja

Jun. 26th, 2013

09:25 am

So the YoT got a job. He has is Sign All The Stuff meeting on Friday and that's where he'll find out what his shifts will be and how many hours he'll be working.

Yes, it's at McDonald's. He'll be flipping burgers. Or more likely working in the cafe because of the barista thing.

Here's a thing. I know a significant number of people who think that working for McDonald's is somehow sacrificing your integrity to the Cult of the Giant Corporation, and that the best thing a smart kid like the YoT could do is teach himself programming and then create a startup doing something that springs from his fertile imagination that's never been thought of before, and make millions. Or at least, be his own boss, which is superior to flipping burgers in every possible way.

I know some very impressive people who have done some very impressive things straight off the mark, and demonstrated that it is possible to take a non-traditional route to success. I take my hat off to those people.

Those people are not the YoT. He's his own person with his own ideas, and his idea is that he wants to work, earn money, and move out of home. Personally, I think gaining his independence is a pretty admirable goal, even if it is too normal for some folks' tastes.

Thing is, those folks up there, the ones who go and do all these fantastic things and never flip a burger or swipe a checkout? They probably already have a passion, something they know they want to do with their lives. They probably had people who backed that up, even if it was only in the financial support or facilitation or creation of time. They probably had encouragement to have passions when they were developing them.

The YoT's had none of that. And even if he had, that's no guarantee that he'd know what the hell he wanted to do beyond gaining his independence anyway. But independence creates the space for self-actualisation and I've got no doubt that eventually, the YoT will get passionate about something and off he'll go.

Back in the Day, I flipped burgers. I planted kumara, picked kumara, sorted bloody kumara. I swept up sheep shit and sorted wool and wrote poetry in my head while I was doing it. I spent years cutting shit off sheep's arses. I arranged flowers and I cut up dead cows in a meatworks. I cleaned other people's toilets. And what all that dead-end work did was to set me up with everything I needed mentally and physically so that when I finally did find a passion, I could just go do it.

So the YoT will go and flip burgers for a while, and he may end up getting some free education. He's chosen a workplace that stood up against the youth rates, so he'll be paid like the full citizen he is. He'll learn to discipline himself to do stuff even when he doesn't feel like it for the sake of his other goals, and most importantly, he'll have some financial independence which will allow him to begin to shape his own future.

What he does with that is completely up to him - but the fact that he has it makes me think of the 13 year old kid that rescued himself 5 years ago, and I'm damn proud that my kid has a job at McDonald's.

Now, if the universe could just materialise a job for fuvenusrs when she gets here, I think that'll be all the job-requirements of my little community pretty much sorted.

Comments:

I constantly read articles here raving on about how people should follow their passion and become entrepreneurs and so on and so forth, as if everyone and anyone could do it, but it's not that simple - and it would be a strange kind of world if we were all trying to do that!

I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with starting out in a job with McDonalds, or whoever, to earn a bit of money, learn a basic work ethic and just generally start becoming a part of the adult working society. Better to be doing that, while you figure out your long-term plans, than to just sit around doing nothing.

From just before the YoT was born, our government started talking about 'the knowledge economy' which was supposed to be based on educated people doing educated things, and replace agriculture as the country's main export.

Which is all well and good, I'm all for education and innovation, and I'm glad we're becoming less reliant on agriculture too, because agriculture is a big carbon emitter.

But, the mistake they made was to try and channel everybody into the knowledge economy, and this meant that people who would normally learn a trade were instead pushed into university. Now a bachelor's degree's only good enough to get you an entry level job, and there's a giant shortage of tradespeople, who often now make more money than a senior policy analyst.

So I'm all for taking the traditional route. It's actually not that traditional any more. ;-)

Good on him. And the thing is, if he does suddenly find a passion for programming, or becoming a mariachi star, or training ferrits or something, that can be done in parallell with the Maccers job until it looks like it will start paying for itself anyway.

I'm in the "passion is all very well but it doesn't pay the rent unless you are also very lucky" camp. Job snobbery is utterly outdated. I'd work at the Warehouse if it got me my petrol money. There is also a lot of value in knowing you can leave a job and come back to it, not the same in many places. Also I thought McD's had an education program me. Might be wrong.

Good for him! I worked at Starbucks for 2-3 years when I was in school (before it was evil). I worked in a book shop, I was the obnoxious market researcher who rang during dinner. It all makes money, and at this stage that's freedom and independence.

I used to work at McDonalds. My initial management training was at Hamburger University run by McDonalds. It taught me all the management skills I needed to shift over to bank management, which taught me all the skills I needed to get into an MBA program. Opportunities are what you make of them, and I believe that McDonalds led directly to my MBA.

Congratulations and good on him! May he enjoy being his own, independent person and learning useful things about living on his own. And especially good since, if he chooses a different path later, he knows you are there to back him up and support him -- no matter what he chooses.

I already had a passion when I left school, and it got me ... jobs shovelling up shit in stables. I know, impressive, eh? However, the jobs shovelling up shit led to some pretty fast growing up, and a realisation that I didn't much like the jobs that you could get without a degree. Which in turn led me to be much more motivated than I would otherwise have been, when I did get to university.

He's already in KiwiSaver, so I'm assuming that he'll be auto-signed up for it when he starts work, he should just have to give them details of his bank. Or something. I'm actually a bit confused about this because I know the rules changed recently.

You don't happen to know whether it's still opt-out or whether you now have to opt in when you start a new job?

One just has to hope that the local franchisee has a clue about management. Half my family have worked at McDs at some stage of their career (including myself) and having a decent manager makes one helluva difference. I worked in a store where the owners style when something didn't go according to Hoyle was "kick the nearest butt and Accept.No.Explanation.From.Anyone.Ever". Most of my kids worked in a different store where the management style was polar opposites to that...